Pages

Monday, January 20, 2014

Have you ever cooked with xylitol? You may recognize the name of the sugar substitute from packets of sugar-free gum and mints, but until very recently it never came up on my radar as a cooking and baking ingredient. Now it's up there with stevia as being one of the best sugar substitutes in the market, with the power not only to add a sweet taste (1:1 for sugar) but protect gums and teeth, stabilize insulin release and regulate hormone levels. With an extremely low GI, it's safe for diabetics and many of those with yeast (i.e. Candida) issues can use it as well since it has a natural ability to kill yeast cells.

One of the best things about baking with products like Xyla is that it really does behave like sugar in the sweet kitchen, adding tenderness and a crisp outer texture to things like cookies. Unless you're using buckets of the stuff - not something I'd recommend due to it's ability to cause interesting gastric effects when consumed en masse (just like all other sugar alcohols) - you can barely tell you've used anything different, and if you combine the granular Xyla with regular sugar the resulting product is identical to the full-sucrose original. Xyla also makes its own candy, which is a nice enough treat in the middle of the day even though it isn't exactly like the lollipops or hard candy of your childhood. The only variety I wouldn't recommend is the citrus drops, since xylitol has a slight "cool mint" element that doesn't marry to well with vibrant orange.

Xylitol is also not a calorie-free option, though it has 60% of the energy of sugar (2.4 calories / gram vs 4 calories / gram). The energy in the sweetener is also a slowly-digesting form, so your body doesn't switch into "sugar crash" mode after a xylitol treat.

Xylitol's main downfall in the kitchen is in the yeasted bread world... but it doesn't make it totally useless. After a few failed attempts to make dough with xylitol mixed with the flour rise, I changed my tack and mixed it in at the very end of kneading. That, combined with using instant yeast and a slightly longer rise time, contributed to puffier (albeit not "floating away" light) dough perfect for cramming with "bits" - just like these baked doughnuts!

Since I (and my parents) love Tim Hortons' apple fritters, but not their fat content comparable to 11 strips of bacon, it has been a pet project of mine to try and make a slightly healthier option. For these, I made the whole-grain yeast dough sweetened with Xyla and laced with rich camelina oil and spicy nutmeg, then folded in chunks of buttery sauteed apple. To cap it all off, a cinnamony glaze gave them an irresistibly gooey, lick-your-fingers quality that was a spitting image of the ones we used to buy at the apple orchard. While I wouldn't call them "health food", they were definitely above and beyond their chain-made cousins... and that's good enough for me!